Abstract
The new way of looking at the world that was ushered in by the Scientific Revolution was to a large extent the result of the invention of instruments that fashioned a new image of nature. The immensely far and the dauntingly small were brought near by the temperature and weather were conquered by the thermometer and the barometer; and, thanks to Galileo’s discovery of the isochronism of the pendulum, time itself was harnessed by the modern clock. As experience was replaced by contrived experiment, instruments became the mediators of direct impressions of nature. The primary disclosures of sight, feel, sound, taste or smell gave way to the controlled input of devices that were calibrated with ever increasing accuracy.
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Notes
See Albert Van Helden, The Invention of the Telescope, Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, 1977 (“Transactions of the American Philosophical Society”, volume 67, part 4).
Plutarch, The Face on the Moon, 930 D, in Plutarch’s Moralia translated by Harold Cherniss and William C. Helmbold (Loeb Classical Library), London, Heinemann, 1984, vol. XII, p. 111. According to Antonio Favaro, Galileo owned a Latin version of the Moralia translated by William Xylander and published in Venice by Girolamo Scoto in 1572 (Antonio Favaro, “La libreria di Galileo” in Bullettino di Bibliografia e di Storia delle Scienze Matematiche e Fisiche ... da B. Boncompagni XIX, 1886, no 85, p. 245). Galileo could also have used an Italian version, Lafaccia che si vede nella luna, in Opuscoli morali di Plutarco Cheronese Filosofo e Historico No tab ilissimo... tradotti in volgare dal Sign. Marc’Antonio Gandino & da altri letterati, Venice, Fioravante Prati, 1598. See Paolo Casini, “Il Dialogo di Galileo e la luna di Plutarco” in Paolo Galluzzi (ed.), Novità Celeste e Crisi del Sapere, Florence, Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, 1983, pp. 57–62. Plutarch’s work was considered important enough to be translated from Greek into Latin by Johann Kepler who added a substantial set of notes that are almost as long as Plutarch’s text (Plutarchi Philosophi Chaeronensis Libellus de facie, quae in orbe Lunae apparet, and Notae, in Johann Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, Munich, Beck, 1938-, vol. XI, part 2, edited by Volker Bialas and Helmut Grössing, pp. 380–409, 410–436). Kepler’s translation was published posthumously as an appendix to his Somnium in 1634. As early as 1604, Kepler quoted Plutarch several times in his Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena quibus Astronomiae Pars Optica Traditur (in Johann Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, vol. II, pp. 201 ff.). When he saw Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius, his immediate reaction was to tell the Tuscan ambassador in Prague, Giuiiano de’ Medici, that Galileo “had defended Plutarch with very persuasive arguments” (letter of Giuiiano De’ Medici to Galileo, 19 April 1610, in Galileo Galilei, Opere, edited by Antonio Favaro, 20 vols. Florence: G. Barbera, 1899–1909, vol. X, p. 348). He shortly thereafter informed Galileo that he had read Plutarch as early as 1593 on the advice of Michael Maestlin, his professor of astronomy at Tübingen, and that he had begun to translate On the Face of the Moon before hearing of Galileo’s celestial discoveries (Kepler, Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo, in Opere di Galileo Galilei, vol. III, part 1, p. 112). The Italian mathematician, Camillo Gloriosi, also thought of Plutarch when he read Galileo’s work. “What Galileo says about the Moon, he wrote to a friend, is nothing new. It was already stated by Pythagoras, and Plutarch wrote a book on the topic” (letter to Giovanni Terrenzio, 29 May 1610, in Galileo, Opere, vol. X, p. 363).
The Face on the Moon , 934 F, ibid., pp. 139–141.
The Face on the Moon, 923 A, ibid., p. 55.
Alimberto Mauri, Considerazioni sopra alcuni luoghi del discorso di Lodovico delle Colombe intorno alia Stella apparita 1604, Florence, G. Antonio Caneo, 1606. On the authorship of this work, see Stillman Drake, Galileo Against the Philosophers, Los Angeles, Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, 1976, pp. 55–71.
Vincenzo Viviani, Racconto Istorico della Vita di Galileo Galilei, in Galileo, Opere, vol. XIX, p. 602. I quote from the translation by Michael Segre cited in I. Bernard Cohen, “What Galileo Saw: the Experience of Looking Through a Telescope”, in the proceedings of the conference on “Galileo a Padova 1592–1610”, Occasioni Galileiane, Trieste, Edizioni LINT, 1995, vol. V, p. 173.
See Adriana Fiorentini and Lamberto Maffei, “What Galileo’s Brain Told Galileo’s Eye” in Occasioni Galileiane, vol. V, pp. 267–279.
“Conosciamo dunque la profondità, non come oggetto della vista, per se ed assolutamente, ma per accidente rispetto al chiaro e alio scuro.” (Letter of Galileo to Cigoli, 26 June 1612, in Galileo, Opere, vol. XI, p. 341). The letter is discussed by Erwin Panofsky, Galileo as Critic of the Arts, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1954, pp. 5–11. Panofsky recalls that Cigoli in his youth had been instructed in perspective and mathematics by the same Ostilio Ricci who taught Galileo (p. 5, n. 2).
Samuel Y. Edgerton, The Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry, Ithaca & London, Cornell Univ. Press, 1991, pp. 223–234. Edgerton provides illustrations from Danielo Barbara’s Pratica della Perspettiva (1568) and Lorenzo Sirigatti’s Pratica di Prospettiva (1596). See also the illuminating survey of Martin Kemp, The Science of Art, New Haven & London: Yale Univ. Press, 1990, pp. 53–98.
Ewen A. Whitaker, “Selenography in the Seventeenth Century” in R. Taton and C. Wilson (eds.), Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the Rise of Astrophysics. Part A: Tycho Brake to Newton, Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989, p. 122. For a general account of Galileo’s telescopic observation, see Guglielmo Righini, Contributo alla interpretazione scientifica dell’opera astronomica di Galileo, Florence, Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, 1978. Galileo’s Sidereal Messenger is currently available in two English versions, one by Stillman Drake, Telescopes, Tides and Tactics: A Galilean Dialogue about the “Starry Messenger” and Systems of the World, Chicago, Chicago Univ. Press, 1983, which is based on the partial translation that Drake had published earlier in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Garden City, Anchor Book, 1957; the other by Albert Van Helden, Sidereus Nuncius or The Sidereal Messenger, Chicago, Chicago Univ. Press, 1989. There are two excellent French translations with introduction and notes, the first by Fernand Hallyn, Le messager des étoiles, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1992, the second by Isabelle Pantin, Le messager céleste, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1992.
Sidereus Nuncius, Drake trans., p. 23 (In Galileo, Opere, vol. III, p. 62, Van Helden trans., p. 40). Although Plutarch clearly spoke of dark and light regions of the Moon, no image of the Moon itself, as it presents itself to the eye, existed in Western culture as late as 1400. The first naturalistic drawing of the Moon appears in the Crucifixion painted around 1420 by the Flemish master, Jan Van Eyck, and now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, as was shown in 1994 by Scott L. Montgomery, “The First Naturalistic Drawing of the Moon”, Journal for the History of Astronomy, XXV (1994), pp. 317–320. Until then, scholars had attributed the first naked-eye drawings to Leonardo da Vinci, specifically to three sketches that appear in his notebook (G. Reaves and C. Pedretti, “Leonardo da Vinci’s Drawings of the Surface Features of the Moon”, Journal for the History of Astronomy, XVIII, 1987, pp. 55–58).
Sidereus Nuncius, Drake trans., p. 24 (In Galileo, Opere, vol. III, part I, pp. 62–63; Van Heiden trans., p. 40).
See the letter of the mathematicians of the Roman College to Cardinal Bellarmino, 24 April 1611, in Galileo, Opere, vol. XI, p. 93. The other Jesuit cosignatories of the letter, Christoph Grienberger, Odo Malcote and Giovanni Paolo Lembo tended to side with Galileo. Copies of this letter were circulated and one reached Lodovico delle Colombe who wrote from Florence to say that he shared Clavius’ reservations (letter to Clavius, 27 May 1611, in Galileo, Opere, vol. XI, p. 118).
See R. Anew, “Galileo’s Lunar Observations in the Context of Medieval Lunar Theory”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, XV (1984), pp. 213–216.
Sidereus Nuntius, Drake trans., p. 25 (In Galileo, Opere, vol. III, part I, p. 63; Van Helden trans., pp. 40–41).
Sidereus Nuncius, Drake trans., p. 26 (In Galileo, Opere, vol. III, part I, p. 64; Van Helden trans., p. 41).
Sidereus Nuntius, Drake trans., p. 27 (In Galileo, Opere, vol. III, part 1, p. 65; Van Helden trans., p. 43).
Galileo Galilei, Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, in Opere, vol. VII, pp. 123, 96–109; in the English trans. by Stillman Drake, Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, 1962, pp. 97–98, 71–83.
Cf. the illustrations in: Stillman Drake, Galileo at Work, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1978, p. 148.
Sidereus Nuncius, Drake trans., p. 30 (In Galileo, Opere, vol. III, part 1, p. 68; Van Helden trans., p. 47).
Scott L. Montgomery, The Scientific Voice, New York & London, Guilford Press, 1996, p. 226.
Sidereus Nuntius, Drake trans., p. 32 (In Galileo, Opere, vol. III, part 1, p. 70; Van Helden trans., p. 49).
Sidereus Nuntius, Drake trans., pp. 32–33 (In Galileo, Opere, vol. III, part 1, p. 70; Van Helden trans, pp. 49–50).
Letter of Galileo to Giacomo Muti, 28 February 1616, Opere, vol. XII, pp. 240–241. See also Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, First Day, Opere, vol. VII, pp. 125–126, Drake trans., p. 100.
Brengger’s query was communicated to Galileo by Marc Weiser on 29 October 1610, Opere, vol. X, pp. 460–462. Galileo replied on 8 November 1610, Opere, vol. X, pp. 466–473, and Brengger urged his objection in a letter dated 13 June 1611, Opere, vol. XI, pp. 121–125.
Galileo, Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, Opere, vol. VII, p. 86; Drake trans, p. 61.
See John W. Shirley, ‘Thomas Harriot’s Lunar Observations”, in Science and History: Studies in Honor of Edward Rosen (= “Studia Copernicana”, VII (1977), pp. 283–308; Terrie F. Bloom, “Borrowed Perceptions: Harriot’s Maps of the Moon”, Journal for the History of Astronomy, IX (1978), pp. 117–122.
Quoted in John W. Shirley, “Thomas Harriot’s Lunar Observations”, p. 303.
Scott L. Montgomery. The Scientific Voice, p. 215.
Quoted in Ewen A. Whitaker, “Selenography in the Seventeenth Century”, p. 120.
Quoted ibid, pp. 120–121.
See the excellent article by Fernand Hallyn, “Pensée religieuse et pensée scientifique: une fresque galiléenne” in Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani (ed.). La Pensée de l’image, Paris, Presses Univ. de Vincennes, 1994, pp. 51–61. Hallyn shows that the painting, which has often been assumed to represent the Assumption of Mary or even the Immaculate Conception, is really a depiction of the vision in the book of Revelation.
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Shea, W. (2000). Looking at the Moon as Another Earth: Terrestrial Analogies and Seventeenth-Century Telescopes. In: Hallyn, F. (eds) Metaphor and Analogy in the Sciences. Origins, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9442-4_6
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